


World We've Made

by IAmANonnieMouse



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen, Introspection, M/M, Mild Angst, Multi, Post-Canon, spoilers for the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25729270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmANonnieMouse/pseuds/IAmANonnieMouse
Summary: It was easy, at the start, to let herself fixate on the bigger issues – Merrick, Andy’s mortality, Copley, Booker – but now that they’re taking a break, it’s haunting her. Everything she’s lost with this immortality she gained.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 16
Kudos: 88





	World We've Made

*

The football game is playing on the TV, but Joe isn’t watching it. His latest journal is in his lap, his pencil raised. 

Nicky is across the room, nose buried in a book. The lamp casts shadows on his face that Joe wants to draw. But he also wants to just sit, pause for a moment, and take in the sight of his Nicky. His Nicolo. 

“That blank page won’t fill itself,” Nicky says, lips barely curled. He’s still reading his book. 

“I can’t watch the man I love?” Joe asks. He looks down at his journal and lets his hand wander. 

He started a new one after the Merrick business was finished. It seemed fitting.

They arrived in Malta a few nights ago, Andy and Nile, too. They needed this break, this pause to regroup and remember and reflect.

Everywhere they go, there are memories, ghosts of their past, for good and bad. But in Malta, their only memories are good ones. Happy ones.

Nicky was right to say they should come back here.

Joe draws the play of shadows and light, eyes gently tracing over the familiar lines of Nicky’s profile. He’s drawn Nicky for several lifetimes, and he’s never tired of it. He never will.

Nicky closes his book and crosses the room, running gentle fingers through Joe’s hair. “It’s getting late,” he murmurs. 

Joe meets his eyes and smiles. They turn off the TV and head for their bed. Joe wonders if now’s a good time to bring out the champagne he snuck in.

*

Nile misses her family. It was easy, at the start, to let herself fixate on the bigger issues – Merrick, Andy’s mortality, Copley, Booker – but now that they’re taking a break, it’s haunting her. Everything she’s lost with this immortality she gained.

Copley was true to his word, and he made it look like she was KIA. The day Copley gave her the news, Nicky pulled her aside and said, “We’ll take you home, Nile, I promise. You deserve that closure, too.”

She wants that, but she fears it. Her immortality has settled heavily on her bones, and she doesn’t know what the future will bring. She’s seen what it did to Booker in only two hundred years. 

She’s afraid. 

But she’s also relieved. She’s grateful that Andy came for her, even if her method left much to be desired. She’s thankful that she has friends – family – to live with, who will help her adjust to this new reality.

Nile looks at her lockscreen one more time, then places it on the nightstand. She falls asleep quickly, and dreams about home.

*

Andy had forgotten how long pain can linger. It’s jarring, and worse, inconvenient. After Merrick, Nile patched her up and lectured her on hygiene and the importance of rest.

Andy thinks it’s ridiculous how long it takes her to heal now. Even worse, she needs to sleep. Constantly.

She’s sitting in front of her open window tonight, sipping wine and watching the skyline. Remembering.

It’s a good vintage, one that Booker would’ve loved. They would’ve sat together while Booker listened to whatever football game was playing and commiserated over the misery of their immortality. The burden. 

Booker always understood it, more than Nicky and Joe.

She frowns and takes another healthy sip of her wine.

_Just you and me. Until the end._

She should know better than to make promises of forever anymore.

Andy finishes her wine then pushes herself out of the chair. She’s slowly getting used to the constant ache and soreness, but that doesn’t mean she likes it. Immortality was a burden, but so is this. 

But that doesn’t mean Andy’s going down without a fight.

*

Booker is sick of it all. Life. Loss. Solitude. 

He’s drinking some disgusting, cheap wine and wondering what the others are up to. 

He’d thought he was helping them. But now, months and many bottles of alcohol later, he understands where he went wrong. 

It’s too late to do anything about it, though. Much too late for that.

“Couple months down, ninety-nine years to go,” he mutters into his glass.

It’s the quiet that’s the worst. He’s gotten used to Joe’s chatter, Nicky’s quiet insights, Andy’s solid presence. Even Nile, for the few days they were together. But the room he’s in now is barren. Empty. He can almost hear his thoughts echoing off the walls.

He wonders if he’ll start dreaming of them all again, now that they’re apart. He hopes he will. He wants to see their faces again, before they can fade from his memory. He knows how it all works, that steady, inexorable loss of detail until all that remains is a smell or a word or a smile.

Time steals it all, in the end.

He’s lost family before. But he had been so certain he would never have to lose anyone ever again.

He looks out his window and toasts the skyline and wonders if, somewhere else in the world, the others are thinking of him.

*

Quynh still isn’t comfortable with silence. 

During the day, when the world is moving around her and people are going about their daily lives, it’s easier to stay grounded. But at night, when the darkness presses in too close for comfort and the silence is deafening, it’s hard for her to remember to breathe.

It’s that first breath that’s always the hardest, when she’s certain that water will fill her lungs instead of air. She can almost taste the salt, feel the ache in her hands. How many times has she broken them in five hundred years?

But she can’t fight nature, even when it’s her own, and instinct always forces her to gasp for air before she’s ready.

It’s easier, after that, to inhale, exhale, inhale. 

She wonders if it will ever be effortless again.

She stands, slowly, and slides open her window. It’s noisy here in Paris. Crowded. Now that her fear has passed, she can hear the steady bustle of people outside, even in the dead of night. 

The noise had overwhelmed her at first, but she’s able to appreciate it now. 

Quynh runs her fingernails down the glass window pane, relishing the sound and sensation. Tomorrow she’ll visit Booker. It’s long past time they should meet.

*

Nicky’s forgotten how ever slept without Joe at his back. His familiar scent, the soft rasp of his beard. In a world where everything changes, Joe is his anchor, his touchstone. His sanity, in the wake of Merrick and that lab. 

Nicky breathes steadily, grounding himself. They’re in Malta, resting and recuperating. Nile is down the hall, Andy, too. Booker is–

Nicky sighs heavily enough that Joe shifts in his sleep. Booker is gone. Alone, somewhere. Exiled.

After Quynh was lost, Nicky was indescribably grateful that he had Joe. It made him sick with guilt to think of it that way, to feel relief even as they all struggled to track down any hint of her. But it was the truth. 

He knows that Joe had felt guilt for losing Quynh, for letting her and Andy be captured in the first place. And he knows that Joe will feel guilt now, for punishing Booker with the very isolation he feared. Joe will forgive Booker soon. Nicky knows this like he knows his own heartbeat.

But Nicky isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to forgive Booker, even after one hundred years. 

Nile had tried to explain it, to defend it, and yes, Nicky can understand, but that doesn’t mean he can _forgive._ Not when he wakes in the middle of the night, feeling that woman’s needles buried in his skin. Not when he watched Joe die in that lab as she cut slabs of skin and tissue out of him. Not when he spent hours waiting, desperately hoping and praying, _Please, God, not today. Not like this. Bring him back to me one more time._

And he feels guilt, always that heavy, sickening _guilt,_ that he banished his brother instead of trying to forgive.

Joe shifts again and inhales deeply. “Nicolo, why are you awake?” he murmurs in Italian. “It’s late.”

Nicky leans back against him and closes his eyes. “Just thinking,” he responds. “It’s nothing.”

Joe hums and kisses his shoulder. “Rest. We’re okay. I’m right here.”

Nicky nods and twines their fingers together. He has time to fix this. God, he has nothing _but_ time. He’ll talk to Joe about this when he can put the feelings to words. He’ll fix it all. Somehow.

He falls asleep in Joe’s arms, like he has for the past millennium. And, God willing, like they will for centuries to come.

*


End file.
